


No-one Else Gets to Remember the Things We Do

by Kimra



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, But... the story is soft?, Implied Attempted Suicide, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, It's soft and warm and also sad, M/M, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 17:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6763009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimra/pseuds/Kimra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky likes to reminisce about past lives. Steve likes to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No-one Else Gets to Remember the Things We Do

The first time is hazy. Time has a way of washing away the colours and details. It’s the only thing that you can’t fight. Steve's been fine with that, but Bucky likes to reminisce. He writes things down in a diary when he thinks of them and tries to get Steve to read it.

“Did I love you?” Steve will ask without looking at the page. No matter how Bucky persists Steve will only meet his eyes squarely, “Did I love you?”

“Of course you did.” Bucky will relent, indignant that it has to be asked, but that’s half the point Steve's making. Then Steve will draw him in and take the kiss being willingly offered.

 

The first time there was a lot of blood, and steel, and fire. Steve wakes up from dreams, not about it, but about the fear he’d felt while it happened. He wakes with the phantom trauma of ancient horrors and considers burning Bucky’s notes in the stove. He never does, not even when it gets cold and the blankets are too thin.

It can take days of coaxing for Bucky to lure him back under the covers and into slumber when the dreams come. But he always relents, there’s little Bucky would ask of him that he wouldn’t do. Sleep is a hard gift to give, but Steve makes it happen for Bucky.

 

The second time, there had been confusion, and tears, and warmth.

Steve remembers the second time easier, because there’s the smell of fresh lavender, and apples, and when he dreams about it he wakes feeling soft and pliable.

Not even Brooklyn seems harsh on those days. 

 

The rest all sort of blend. These are the times Bucky likes to poke at.

“Were we in France?” Bucky asks persistent as always.

“You want to go to France?” And Steve looks up from his tinned beans.

“No you idiot.” He pauses, “Well of course, but I meant before before.”

Steve shrugs the question away and redoubles his focus on conquering the food. Those sort of details aren’t important so long as he’s with Bucky, but he thinks maybe he’ll find out how much it would cost to go. France was always beautiful.

 

They don’t always remember each other straight away. Steve knows that. It’s the kind of detail he turns over and over in his head, wondering how many lives they missed each other. He assumes it must have happened a few times, maybe a lot more than that. It reminds him to be thankful for every time they remembered.

Sometimes the memories come with the touch of skin. Sometimes when they see each other across a room. Sometimes they ease in slowly one piece at a time. It never happens before puberty, but sometimes it doesn’t happen until they’re grey and wobbly and run into each other in a busy bazaar in Cairo.

 

This time they come in slow.

They’ve known each other for a few years, somehow locked themselves into an unbreakable friendship. And Steve’s thirteen and in love with Bucky with every scrap of his frail body but he’s smart enough not to tell. There are words, unkind words, for what he wants them to be, but he’s okay with what they are.

The memories change everything.

They’ve touched, hugged, been in scraps, and clambered into each other’s beds for warmth on winters nights. But it’s not until they’ve both figured out what their bodies can be used for that the memories return.

Little pieces of the past become bigger pieces, until eventually it’s not just an idea but a memory. And they build, memory by memory until one day Steve looks up from his slate, and Bucky’s looking right back at him and they both know it’s real.

 

The memories aren’t always as welcome.

Steve loves Bucky, and Bucky loves Steve. This is a constant throughout their lives. Not required, not forced, they just always fall in love. But sometimes it’s more complicated than love.

“Do you think we’ve been married?” Bucky asks head resting in Steve's lap. Bucky had turned up on his doorstep, dripping wet and beaming the day after they’d been sure. They’d both been young and free and there had been nothing to stop them falling back into each other with the ease of a hundred lifetimes to guide them. They’d shut the door though, been quiet, no-one else needed to know.

“To each other?” Steve muses over the question as he sketches. He’s studied some history, never his own, and he wonders if there was a time, before the books can remember, where the world had given them the right.

“Who else would we marry?” Bucky laughs at Steve, pokes him in the side and decides it’s time to go boil the kettle.

Steve doesn’t tell him about Miriam, or Katie, or the ones whose names he’s lost to time. He follows his lover into their kitchen and prepares the cups, happy that this time he can bring himself to touch the other man.

 

Usually they aren’t far from each other. Like the world, or the universe, or whatever is doing this to them is always giving them the chance to meet. A town over, a village over, next door neighbours. Occasionally they start at such different places it’s amazing they find each other at all. Those times are always the hardest, when they’re fighting against their own life spans to find the other. Those lives Steve forgets on purpose.

 

They always die.

The memory of their last deaths is always one of the earliest things they remember. It’s the kind of thing that makes Steve think this is a punishment not a gift.

“How much longer did you get?” Bucky asks one evening while the radio murmurs on. Steve knows that Bucky’s thinking about his last death, cut down in a melee of peasants and political leaders. Steve thinks about how he’d turned his back for only a moment and that had been long enough.

“Five months.” He answers honestly, because you don’t keep that a secret.

Dying is mutual. Not at once. Not together. But once one is gone the other never lasts long. It’s not intentional, but once one of them is gone something in the other just stops ticking.

“Do you think you could hold off longer next time?” Bucky grips Steve's hair and pushes his head back so their eyes meet. Steve rests his hand on Bucky’s hip.

“Why would I want to?” He asks, and Bucky has no answer.

 

When the war returns to Europe Bucky suggests they run.

“Let’s go back to Mexico,” he encourages. It’s half joke and three quarters plea.

“That turned out well last time,” Steve counters before a coughing fit takes him.

Bucky hovers around him like a protective mother, gets him warm drinks and nurses him through the worst of the fever.

He doesn’t mention it again.

 

They read about it in the papers, and hear about it in the streets. Everything is out to remind them it’s happening.

Steve finds himself thinking about the wars they’ve fought. Over and over again, always fighting for a cause they believed in. He thinks about how they never really die, even when they do. How there are thousands of men dying who don’t have that security. How he has less of a right to do nothing than any of them.

Bucky was right to want to run, because Steve wants to fight.

 

Bucky goes out one day and comes back enlisted.

“You’re just jealous I beat you to it,” Bucky teases, all swagger and pride.

“I tried. They declared me unfit,” Steve admits, unable to look away from the floor.

Bucky comes up behind Steve and wraps him up in his arms. “How many times?”

“Twice. So far.”

Above him Bucky sighs, “Always chomping at the bit for a fight.”

Steve tries to argue, because he doesn’t want to go and die, he doesn’t want to lose these moments he has with Bucky again. Even when he knows it’s inevitable, he doesn’t want to do it. They’re still so young. But he can’t not do it.

Bucky distracts him with kisses and touches, and reminds him that at least one of them is going to war soon.

They make the most of the time they have left together.

 

“It’s not our first war, right Steve?” Bucky’s hats on lopsided, his grin in full force. Steve wants to drag Bucky down and into a kiss that will never end, but they’re in public with girls at their sides and Steve isn’t stupid.

“The guns are better now.” Steve mopes because he still can’t get them to take him and now he’s going to send Bucky off on his own when they’d both thought Steve would be right there behind him.

“Well I’ll just have to be better as well.”

Steve slips away to try again, but it’s no use. This time, this life, his body’s not good enough. It’s ripped apart by diseases and infections and he’s surprised he’s lasted as long as he has. The army doesn’t want to waste resources on him and he has to watch the one constant in his life disappear into the smoke of war.

 

Steve’s seen the things people can do. Through time and history the impossible has become possible, so he’s not sure anything is really impossible. When Erskine explains Project Rebirth to him all Steve can think about is the opportunity to help.

That Bucky is in the midst of the one place that needs help isn’t a small bonus by any means, but wars are messy and confusing and this one is stretched across half the world. Steve knows they probably won’t cross paths until the whole thing is over.

 

Bucky’s weak from imprisonment but he still pushes Steve into an empty tent in anger the moment eyes have turned away from them.

“We should get you to the medical tent.” Steve tries to get out, but Bucky blocks him in.

“What did you do?” he demands, angry at Steve.

“I gave us a few more years, if we’re lucky.” Steve counters, arms folded resolutely. He will not apologise for this, he hasn’t felt this good in years.

“I was the one in a war zone.”

“And I was the one dying from everything else.” Steve holds his arms out wide, ridiculous body on display.

“You didn’t need to do anything, you could have stayed home.” Bucky keeps going, frustrated and confused.

Steve smiles, “When have I ever done that?” and Bucky’s shoulders relax, the anger gone just as quickly as it’s come.

“Seriously Steve, government experiments?” he demands later that night when they’ve snuck out past the sentries into the darkness for some real privacy. “I need to see what else has changed.” He decides when Steve just shrugs.

After that there’s a lot of fumbling with buckles and Bucky’s down on his knees complementing the government’s hard work. It’s almost distracting. Almost.

 

They die together, Steve remembers when Bucky falls from the train. They die together, and he’s only got five months, if that, left to do what he can for this war.

He thinks, drinking down alcohol that does nothing for him, that if he was going to keep living he’d be happy with Peggy. He doesn’t love her the same way he loves Bucky, but he’s loved more than one person in the lives he’s lived, and he thinks she’s the best woman he’s ever loved. It wouldn’t be a compromise or betrayal. It would be something that made him happy, that made her happy. The kind of thing he sometimes gets with Bucky. That he didn't get this time because neither of them know how to run from a war.

But he is going to die, because they die together, so he doesn’t let the idea fester once he’s pushed his grief out of the way.

He’s got five months, less, and he’ll do what he can while he’s still here to help.

 

When he goes down in the ice Steve thinks it’s good enough. He’s done his bit.

It was only a matter of time once Bucky fell anyway. And it’s a good enough way to go as any. He can go knowing he’s done what he could. That he’s done more than others could.

The cold puts him to sleep.

He never expects to wake up. 

 

Director Fury explains he’s been frozen for seventy years.

Director Fury explains he’ll be disorientated.

Steve wants to know why he’s not dead.

“We’re not sure, Cap. But they think the serum was so powerful your body fought to keep itself alive in the ice.”

 

Steve doesn’t know what it means. He tries to pretend it’s okay, but he’s going through the motions waiting to die. Being frozen has just delayed the countdown, he’s sure. Positive. It’s only a matter of time.

Eight months later he can’t ignore it anymore.

He’s in the middle of a faux-old bar with Natasha and Clint, swaths of television screens playing hyper coloured versions of baseball. Clint tracks a game out of the corner of his eye.

“You like Baseball?” Steve asks. He’s wrung out from a week in Vietnam chasing down an enemy using bunkers and warrens from a war Steve hadn’t been told happened.

“Kershaw’s got a good arm.” Clint sips at his beer. “You get that back in your time, Rogers?”

Steve looks at the screen, scrawls of text, and bright colours overwhelming everything else. “Baseball?” He knows it’s not what’s been asked, “Of course we had baseball.” The idea of having ‘a time’ when he’s lived so many of them is strange. He remembers the 20’s like any child does. But he also remembers the 1846 in a way that feels just as real.

“Steve doesn’t own a TV,” Natasha supplies as if being helpful. “They outfitted his apartment, but he made them return the TV.”

“You should get one,” Clint tells him. “I mean, just because you didn’t have TV’s in the 40’s, doesn’t mean you can’t have them now, right?”

“We had TV’s. They just weren’t everywhere. Bucky’s neighbours had one and we’d all watch the boxing exhibitions.” Steve feels nostalgic. “It was black and white, and the screen was barely the size of a dinner plate. It was always a bit of an event for the building.” He remembers that easy feeling, of Bucky, of safety, of home.

“Sucks they’re all dead,” Clint says, and it’s meant to be commiserating. There’s not a single hint of malice in the words, Clint’s lost people too, but Steve’s blindsided.

“They are, aren’t they?” Steve realises fully for the first time. He’s known they were all dead, he looked them up. Peggy’s the last one left, and even she’s not really there. “They’re all dead.”

Natasha smacks the back of Clint’s head, and he blinks owlishly at her in surprise.

“Hey you know what?” Natasha begins in an easy tone. “Steve,” she says to draw his attention back to her. “Tony’s out of town this week we should test out his security systems.”

“Why aren’t I dead?” he asks aloud for the first time. Natasha’s mouth twists unhappily.

“Oh, hey man,” Clint barrels on aware of what he’s done, “We’ve-“

“I was supposed to die.” It’s been ten months. Ten months and seventy years. His strings have been cut, Bucky is dead, but he’s not falling like he should. “I think I ruined it,” he admits ignoring whatever it is Natasha and Clint are saying. They’re talking fast, bouncing words around him, light tones, placating. But Steve suddenly knows he’s ruined it all. Maybe it was the serum, maybe it was the ice, but either way; “I think I killed him forever.”

And it’s not fair. Not fair that he made a choice that he can’t take back, that he can’t die from, just to fight another war. He wants to rip the serum out of his body. Wants to squeeze every last drop of it out of him until he’s a small and weak and on the edge of dying every day. Because if he doesn’t die, Bucky can’t come back and he doesn’t know what the point is if Bucky isn’t with him until the end of the line.

 

He spends a week in the hospital after the incident, not because he’s hurt, but because they want to observe him. Clint comes in with a black eye and an apology that he doesn’t owe. Then produces a little radio pre-tuned to the game that night.

“Sorry about the eye.” Steve isn’t even sure when Clint got it. Just knows it happened in the bar.

“I’ve been using it as a reason to exercise the other one more,” Clint grins, “Besides I think Natasha did it.”

It’s possible. Steve can’t exactly remember what happened, just that they’d tried to stop him and he hadn’t wanted to be stopped. He’d healed most of his injuries on his arms before the tranquiliser has worn off and the doctors guarded his records with fierce intent. Afraid seeing the evidence will make him repeat the action.

“You okay man? You kind of scared us,” Clint asks, and it’s better than when the doctors ask because Steve is pretty sure Clint cares about the answer.

“I’ll live.” Is all the assurance he can give.

 

He wonders how you bury someone who’s already dead to the rest of the world. He still doesn’t have his answer when Fury dies on the operating table and S.H.I.E.L.D. implodes. So it’s a relief to have something new to focus on, and the Winter Soldier trying to kill them fills the role impressively.

Then he throws the assassin across the asphalt and his facemask is ripped away.

Steve’s not expecting to recognise the super secret soviet assassin. There are more than two billion people in the world, and he’s seventy years out of contact, there is absolutely no reason Steve would know this one. Except he does. The recognition is instant, and then he shuts down.

Steve doesn’t know how to breath, or what’s happening, or how it’s happening. All he knows is that he is looking at Bucky, alive and… alive. And he can’t feel his arms, or his legs, or tell them to move when he thinks he should be moving. Moving closer, faster, because it’s Bucky but Bucky doesn’t seem to know it.

Natasha solves the whole situation by shooting a rocket launcher at the assassin. Steve thinks it’s an overreaction, but he’s extremely bias.

 

He doesn’t have time to realise what it means until after Fury’s sprouting speeches again.

Bucky isn’t dead. He didn’t die. He can’t have, he looks exactly the same and they always look different. He didn’t die so Steve couldn’t die.

It isn’t broken.

Steve remembers cutting into his arms in that stupid bar, remembers Natasha and Clint wrestling him into submission. If they hadn’t been there he wouldn’t have just been killing himself in one grief filled moment of despair, he’d have killed Bucky as well.

There’s no privacy to cry in, so he hits the walls instead.

“You up for this, Rogers?” Natasha keeps her distance.

“Fine,” he lies. “Let’s do this.”

There are two facts Steve knows: Bucky must be stopped, and he can not kill Bucky. Not because he’s afraid to die. Not now when he knows it’s not broken and they’ll come back again, but because it’s Bucky. He can’t imagine the next life, having to face Bucky knowing he’d done anything but his best.

 

“We have something really special, Steve.” Bucky had promised, wrapped around him on the tiny bed, a thin door away from being discovered, “No-one else gets this, but us. No-one else gets to remember the things we do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback Welcome


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